15 Seconds
by Fading Time
Summary: All his life flashed before his eyes in 15 seconds. Rated M because I'm a worrywart and it may contain some slightly 'adult' themes.


**A/N: This is my first fanfic. Please excuse me if I have messed up with the grammar or anything like that, and sorry if the story is hard to understand.**

**Disclaimer: The Hunger Games and its characters belong to Suzanne Collins.**

15.

His father had said everyone was born with rosewood growing inside them. Then he'd entered the Games, and he'd won, and he knew the rosewood had died.

And he'd fathered a bastard son with some wild-haired girl, to hide the pain.

14.

He'd been an outcast. He wasn't as good looking as the other boys. He was the son of a Victor. He was the bastard son of a Victor. Why would a district hero like a Victor have a bastard child?

So they'd rejected him. The other kids, the teachers at the school; they all rejected him.

13.

His father drank. And smoked. And gambled. And drank some more. He wanted to hide the pain, to grieve over the loss of his rosewood - the loss of his humanity. That's only what the outer district victors did, not someone from One.

They'd killed him. They killed him because he was a disgrace to their district.

He'd been sent to live where the orphans lived. And that was where he first saw her. He'd a childish infatuation with her then.

12

"How did your parents die?" he'd asked once.

"My dad died in a factory incident. My mom was killed by the Capitol."

"Why?"

She'd turned away at his question.

11.

He was sixteen when he knew why her mother had been killed. When the Capitol decides to punish you, they don't stop with you. Her mother was his mother, too.

10.

She'd volunteered; he'd been reaped. They were in the 74th Games together. On the last night, he'd wanted to tell her everything. After all, what did it matter if they were both going to die?

9.

She'd cried when he told her, when he'd said, "Your mother was killed because she slept with my father, the coward of District One."

8.

The countdown seemed too slow for him. His eye had been on the weapons in the Cornucopia, and he'd get that spear, no matter what. He'd kill whoever got in the way. He'd show everyone back home that he wasn't worthless because of his father's behaviour. He'd show them that he was _something_.

7.

Between the two of them, they'd killed five tributes. He knew they didn't deserve death any more than he did. But he'd said nothing, did nothing. He'd smothered that plant of rosewood within him because he wanted to be remembered. He wanted to be somebody District One would be proud to say was one of them.

6.

He'd watched her flirt with Cato, and he didn't know what to feel. She was related to him, after all, but what he'd felt was more than brotherly protectiveness. He'd been disgusted with himself for even thinking it.

5.

In the midst of the hallucinations, all he could think about was getting away. He saw his father cut to pieces, saw his mother shot to death, saw his district partner die from a blur which he couldn't distinguish. Whatever it was, it horrified him.

That wasn't the worst of the images the Tracker Jackers stimulated. But, as they say, the worst things cannot be described.

4.

He hadn't heard her cries for help. He hadn't heard the cannon over the buzz in his ears. He hadn't noticed at all until he was in the lake and the water refreshed him and he'd realised she wasn't there. He saw her in the sky that night, and he'd cried. The tears had flowed down and glistened like the stars and glimmered like her name.

3.

He hadn't stayed with the pack now that she was gone. _I'm still somebody,_ he'd convinced himself. _I'm going to get revenge_.

2.

He did get revenge. He killed the little girl. A loved one for a loved one. But he'd been hit too.

As the seconds faded, he wondered what he'd been trying to prove. Had he really just wanted people to know him for who he was and not for who his father was? He'd achieved that, in any case. He'd be another disgrace to District One. He allowed himself to be killed by someone from _Twelve_, just like his partner. All he'd been striving for ended there.

Twelve didn't just take two lives. She shattered a family; she shattered him before he died.

1.

And the wind rose and blew the last remaining pieces of rosewood away from his soul, because blood is thicker than rosewood. Love is thicker than humanity, thicker than life. He would die lonely, but he would be joining them.

And it was the wind, only the wind,that spoke to him. Only the wind made an effort to reach out to him, to remember him. And the wind also promised it'd remember her, too. The wind only said one word, and only one word was needed for him to know.

"Goodbye."

0.


End file.
